I sadly worked for a subprime mortgage company in the early 2000s. One of the better ones, sadly. No one was forcing anyone to give those loans, in fact the companies were bending over backwards. Did your numbers not work? We fired one sales manager for advising his loan officer to advise his customer to photoshop his pay stubs. That guy was rehired at a much bigger company in under a week.

No, everyone wanted to give bad loans (and, incidentally, get bad loans.) The thought was that everything would be consolidated, sold off in a package, and probably work out for the best. If not, well, by that point it was someone else's problem.

As it turned out, it was all of our problem. Pretty much everyone deserves blame here. Bankers. Loan officers. Borrowers. Bill Clinton. George Bush.